Robots galore exhibited at Monterey naval school

Man's best friend, especially in perilous situations, may have been among the new generation of robots that were on display Thursday afternoon at the Naval Postgraduate School, a showcase by the Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER).

A wide-eyed audience at theevent, known as Robots in the Roses Research Fair, mingled among the odd-looking contraptions that flew, floated and rolled, serving a variety of purposes, including mapping, surveillance and mine sweeping.

One of the larger devices on display was a seven-year-old Autonomous Surface Vehicle — the Sea Fox — essentially a remote-controlled, 16-foot water vessel used for surveillance and obstacle avoidance.

"Right now we're using it for autonomous navigation on rivers, which can be a very difficult environment to operate in," said Sean Kragelund, a research associate and doctoral student at the NPS. "Our teams use night-vision goggles and high speeds to go through some very dangerous points at night, but they're susceptible to things right below the water line — tree stumps, fallen logs, that sort of thing. So we're developing sonar technology to see all of the underwater hazards, with a laser to see everything above the water line."

The technology allows a vehicle like the Sea Fox to create a map as it moves through an uncharted area, enabling manned vessels to follow safely behind.

"It's designed, for example, for South American rivers and Navy special warfare," he said. "We test it in the Pearl River in Mississippi, which is very muddy, with a lot of trees and foliage, and about as tropical as it gets here in America. We've got it working well at low speeds, but the next step is to put it on other (unmanned) boats."

"This device is basically used by the oceanographic community right now, but we're trying to incorporate it into what's called the Seaweb Project," said NPS student Joe Beach, standing next to something resembling a seaworthy kitchen countertop. "We'll use a bunch of underwater nodes to acoustically transmit information to our command centers, where people will monitor the data."

"These are prototype commercial robots from Synbotics and Segway that we're using in various projects," said Brooks Lame, of Moves Institute, gesturing to a pair of small, squat vehicles, one equipped with tank tread. "One is a marksmanship training project for moving-target research. We also can utilize these robots to carry supplies to Marine Corps teams that are out in the field, or even medevac evacuations."

Another remote-control four-wheeler was equipped with an arm that can be used to reach out and detonate mines that have been planted in a field.

"This one is actually an old platform that we inherited," said NPS research associate Michael Day. "We want to get some students working on it, bring the control systems back up to working order, and give them something to learn on."

Nearby were several small, single-winged aircraft used to research methods to deal with drone attacks on Navy service vehicles, Bay said.

"We're trying to determine how we can counter those attacks," he said. "Some have red trim on the wings, others have blue trim. The red ones fly in a swarm, and the blue ones are in another swarm, and we use them to play a game that's almost like capture the flag. One team is trying to defend a spot on the land. The other team is trying to get to the landing zone without being tagged. We're simulating an attack on a ship or a high-value target on the ground.

"It's research. But I am flying radio-control planes with computers on them," he said. "So, yeah, it can be fun and exciting."

Other drones resembled small helicopters, some with single propellers, others with multiple props.

The REMUS Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is a 62-inch-long, 7.5-inch diameter torpedo-like device that can travel at depths of 100 meters below the surface and, thanks to a side-scan device, is used for underwater mapping.

"We put secondary onboard computers on it to take in the sensory input and do obstacle avoidance and collaborative work with other AUVs," said Tad Masek, an AUV researcher at the NPS. "That allows us to modify its mission while its under way to adapt to situations."

The event included an address by Robert Work, Undersecretary of the Navy, introduced to the audience as "the father" of the CRUSER program at NPS.

"This research fair gives us just a fascinating hint of the wide array of research that is going on in unmanned systems, and just a small glimpse of what we might see in the future," he said. "I knew the Naval Postgraduate School would be the logical place to have a program that tried to bring together concept development, research and experimentation to try to show the way forward in unmanned systems."